Approaching the idea of approachable

The other day I was in an out-of-town grocery store when I passed a guy in fresh vegetables, smiled, said, “Hello,” and kept going.

A few minutes later, he pushed his buggy (a strictly Southern term, you know) around the corner, wheeled up beside me and said, “You have the most beautiful smile.”

“Oh, you’re so sweet!” I said in that drawling Southern way of our women. “Thank you so much!”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Can I take you to lunch?”

Now, please don’t think for one minute that I’m going out with a guy I had seen first only three minutes before, who dares to ask me out in front of the canned green beans. Still, there is a point to this story.

This kind of thing happens to me all the time, so when women write me and say, “I’m attractive, outgoing and smart. Still, guys never ask me out. Why?”

I always reply, “You have to have approachability.”

See, guys need to feel that they can come up to a woman, put themselves on the line and not be shot dead. Approachability is the “it” factor of dating. Some women, without realizing it, rope themselves off with a sign that is invisible to them but visible to men that says, “Watch